Asking for God
by Kansas42
Summary: Greg finally breaks out of the lab. GrissomCatherine friendship. GrissomGreg friendship.


"Aren't you coming?"  
A standard question from Catherine as Grissom, totally having dismissed her from his mind, stared down at his bugs. He glanced up at her, as if in surprise that she was still there. "No," he said. "I've got to work on this entomological time line." He shrugged and went to his standard reply when anyone requested his presence. "Take Nick with you."  
"Yeah, and that'd be fun if Nick wasn't in a conference in Colorado, remember?"  
Grissom frowned. "Oh. Right." His brow crinkled as he tried to think of who Catherine could take with her. Warrick and Sara were already gone, checking out an ambulance collision near Desert Palms. His frown deepened. . .  
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up I'll FUCK you UP!" Catherine turned around even as Grissom stood up, almost in alarm until he realized that the offensive noise was just Greg Sander's taste in "music". Greg, himself, was head banging around his DNA lab. Grissom shook his head. . .and then smiled suddenly as a lightbulb lit up over his head. Catherine noticed the smile.  
"What?" she asked somewhat suspiciously.  
Grissom shrugged again. "Well, you need to take someone with you."  
Catherine glanced at Greg, now actually dancing on a counter top, and then glared back at Grissom. "You're not serious."  
"I'm sorry, Catherine, but everyone else is busy." Grissom's smirk widened. "Think of this as a teaching experience." Catherine raised her eyebrows and turned back to the dancing Greg.  
"Ri-ight."  
  


* * *

  
"Come on, Catherine, this Beatles stuff is old. Let's listen to some good music. Have you ever heard of System of a Down?"  
Catherine gave "her charge" a dry look as she drove down the highway to their crime scene. "Was that the crap you were playing in the lab earlier?"  
Greg gave her an offended look. "That was not crap. That was Korn."  
"Same difference." "Not at all. Korn is sweet. Crap is this junk we're listening to now."  
"My SUV, my music. Just concentrate on working the crime scene with me, okay Greg?"  
"You're not in a very good mood today, are you?" Catherine gave him a withering glance. Greg raised his eyebrows and puts his hands up. "Sorry, sorry. Don't shoot the lab rat."  
Catherine sighed and threw her head back on the headrest behind her. Staring out at the road ahead, she sighed. "Lindsay got into a fight again yesterday. And then another one. Only the second one was with me."  
Greg looked at Catherine. She wasn't close-mouthed about her life like Grissom, and certainly not where Lindsay was concerned, but she never really confided in him. It was actually only this year that Catherine had treated him at all differently, like a real, mature person, and not just some kid who worked in the lab. It could have been because he covered up for her when she screwed up on the case against Braun, who of course ended up being her father. Or maybe she just felt guilty about nearly blowing him up.  
"How many fights has she gotten into since Eddie. . ."  
"Four in school. Another one outside of it, after the bus dropped her off." Catherine shook her head. "I don't know. She's just. . .she's been so different. And, I mean, her dad died, and I know that's why and I have to take her grief into account and be fair, but. . .I just want my daughter back sometimes."  
Greg opened his mouth to say something that would help and didn't know what to say. What could you say about something like that? As he hesitated, Catherine turned onto a narrow, dusty road and then into a small driveway of a little white house surrounded by police cars.  
"We're here," she announced and got out of the car. Greg watched her walk up to the house and then unbuckled his seat belt. Nice going, Greggo, he thought to himself. Helped out there. "Hopefully I can help out in there," Greg said to himself, looking out at the little white house, and stepped out of the SUV.  
  


* * *

  
The blood was staggering.  
Greg had held his breath entering the house after Catherine and Detective O'Riley but there was nothing disrupted in the living room. Everything looked about how it should have, except that no one was there and the television was still on, now playing Dr. Phil's talks show. Here's one soul you can't save, Greg had thought to himself and then brought himself back to listen to what O'Riley was saying.  
"DB's in the master bedroom. Victim's name is a Charlotte Vanguard, female, 27 years of age. Her daughter, ah, Theresa, age four, is missing. Apparantly, Charlotte's ex, James VanGuard, was fighting for Theresa in a custody battle and the courts ruled him unfit. What do you think, Catherine? Guy killed the mom and took off with the kid?"  
Catherine had shrugged. "Too early to say. Where's the master bedroom?"  
"This way," Detective O'Riley had said and moved through a small hallway leading towards the back of the house. Greg had followed, noticing how nothing seemed particularly disturbed. Maybe this murder wouldn't be so bad. He had seen one dead body and managed to deal all right with it, no nightmares, at any rate, but it hadn't been that gory either. His first time out in the field, with Nick at the bus crash, he had freaked out seeing this guy cough up blood. Just the blood unnerved him. So different than it was in a little vial back in his lab. . .well, this place seemed pretty in order. Maybe this Charlotte had only been drowned or something.  
Greg had stepped into the bedroom. And stopped. The blood was everywhere. It didn't seem that there was enough blood in the human body to produce the amount of blood that was present in the room. The walls were all splattered with it, save the one nearest to the doorway, and it was pooled, literally pooled, on the top of the bedspread. Those sheets had once been white but now. . . Yet there was no body. Greg swallowed hard, looking at all of the blood, and then looking down at his feet. If this was just what the room looked like. . .  
Catherine seemed unfazed by the amount of blood but she also seemed to notice the bedroom was lacking a vital element. "Where's the body, O'Riley?"  
He jerked his head towards the bed. "Under that." He shook his head. "Anonymous phone call tipped the police off. Emergency dispatcher said that the caller, a male, told her that 'we'd find her hiding, like always', whatever that means."  
Catherine knelt down on one side of the bed, careful to not touch the blood staining into the carpet. She picked up the corner of the sheet and looked under the bed. There was a long pause. "Damn," she finally breathed, shaking her head.  
Greg started to move towards her, then hesitated. Yes, it was true that he wanted to be more involved, to get out of the lab, maybe even one day actually be a CSI, but he didn't want to look under that bed. He didn't ever want to see what was under that bed.  
Catherine lifted her head up and looked at Detective Riley. "Thanks, Riley," she said and he left the bedroom. Then she returned her attention to the dead body. "Greg," she said, not turning around, "give me my kit, will you?" Greg picked up the case she had set down by the door and handed it to her, still looking hesitantly at the bed. "Thanks," she said and pulled on some gloves, looking at the body again. Then she seemed to frown and looked back up at Greg, as if remembering he was actually there to do other things than be a CSI bellhop. "You okay, Greg?"  
Greg nodded, but he had to swallow again to do so. He cleared his throat nervously and then asked, "What do you want me to do?"  
Catherine looked at him and a touch of compassion reached her face, the skin around her eyes softening from hard scrutinization to soft realization. "Why don't you go process the little girl's room? O'Riley will show you to it." Greg looked around. He definitely didn't want to stay in here but he couldn't chicken out on her now. He'd get shut back in the lab forever.  
"You don't need to be soft on me. If you want me in here with. . .the vic. . .then I'll work in here."  
Catherine smiled lightly. "It's okay, Greg. The whole point of training is to work you in gently and this isn't the most gentle murder I've ever seen."  
"But it's not fair to Charlotte Vanguard to have less people working on her case just because I'm squeamish about blood."  
Catherine shrugged. "Greg, Charlotte Vanguard is dead. It's our job to find her killer and bring him to justice. But there's still a little girl missing and that's the highest priority right now. Just because you're not wading in blood doesn't mean you aren't doing important work. If you can find some clue to track down whoever took little Theresa Vanguard in her bedroom, than you would be doing a lot more than you would be in here, trying to not vomit. Okay?"  
Greg laughed, a little. "Fair enough," he said and left the master bedroom, leaving Catherine on her knees by the bed. He glanced down the hallway. There were only two other rooms. He didn't need Detective O'Riley to escort him. Greg put on his gloves and opened the first door to find a toilet looking back at him. "Okay, wrong room," he said and headed down the hall.  
The door to the little girl's room was slightly ajar and he pushed it open all the way. There was no blood on the walls, which was a relief, even though he hadn't been expecting any. The air in the girl's room was surprisingly cool compared to the master bedroom and Greg felt a touch of breeze hit his cheek. He looked towards the window. It was open. "Hmmm," Greg said. "Maybe the killer came through the window to surprise the Vanguards." He began to play out the scenario in his mind.  
The killer, an adult male shadowed over, opens Theresa's bedroom window from the outside. He easily climbs inside and sneaks quietly down the hall, staring at Theresa and her mother, Charlotte, watching TV. Charlotte goes into her bedroom to get something, a brush, maybe, for little Theresa's hair, and is surprised when the perp follows her into her room and shuts the door behind them. Charlotte looks at surprise as she recognizes the man but before she can say anything, he attacks, knocking her unconscious before she can scream out to her little girl. He drags the body under the bed even as little Theresa, wondering where her mother is, gets up to walk to the bedroom. The perp leaves the bedroom, face to face with little Theresa. "Daddy?" He picks her up even as she screams and carries her back through the bedroom window to escape.  
"Could've been," Greg said to himself and walked over to the window to fingerprint it. He was new at fingerprinting, so they weren't as clear as maybe Grissom's would have been, but they were easily good enough to get a match out of them. Two distinct fingerprints stood out and Greg smiled. Maybe he could be good at this.  
As he turned away from the window, the edge of Greg's gaze caught the bed and instantly he felt himself swallow again. What if the girl hadn't been taken away? What if she also was under her bed, the way her mother was, lying bloody and broken with unseeing eyes. Greg stared at the bed for a few minutes and then, pushing his shoulders back, forced himself to kneel down and look under the mattress. Nothing except a few stuffed animals and a couple of pairs of dirty socks. Greg breathed a sigh of relief.  
Greg looked around the room, trying to find something out of place, and ended up looking at the closet. If the perp was the little girl's dad, maybe he had stolen a back pack and some clothes for the little girl to wear. He could have dropped something or even left a hair behind for Greg to find. Greg smiled to himself. It would be so righteous if he could find the big casebreaker to lead him and Catherine to the killer. They'd never keep him stuck in the lab. They'd be begging for Greg to come on all of the cases. He'd have to keep shaking his head, saying "Now, now, I can't be everywhere, you guys," while everyone whined that they needed him. Grissom would finally see Greg as someone other than that crazy guy in the lab, Sara would look at him not as a weird, younger brother, but as a real person, as a man. . . Still smiling at this fantasy, Greg walked across the room and opened the closet.  
And stopped breathing.  
Sitting at the bottom of the closet amist a few little pink dresses and a couple of pairs of little girl's shoes was Theresa Vanguard. There was never any doubt in his mind on who the little girl was. This was Theresa. Her hair, dark and touseled, ended just a little above her shoulders; her hands were clasped in a loose position of prayer in her lap. The little white shirt she had on was stained down the front with blood. Her brown eyes were not closed. They were open. There was no hope that she was asleep. There was no hope that she was alive. Her eyes were open and they stared dully at Greg. Her eyes were open and blank and dead.  
He didn't feel his hands go numb or hear the sound of the field kit drop from his fingers and hit the ground next to him. He didn't feel himself drop very slowly to his knees or hear Catherine come in the room. He heard nothing of her gasp as she saw the dead body or her first call to him. All of his senses vanished for an instant, just an instant, save the sense of sight. All he could do was stare back at the little dead girl whose eyes' looked blankly into his eyes. All he could do was stare at her death.  
Then, as if God had touched his heart and flicked the switch that said 'Other Senses', the world came back to him in a flash and he stood up quickly and backed away from the little dead girl. Suddenly he could hear again, Catherine calling his name, the cops running down the hallway, the sirens in the distant air. He could taste the saliva in his mouth and smell the little girl's blood. He could feel his hands again and the world came back in motion, as if time had stopped for just an instant, and then came back in mega speed. Everything and everyone suddenly moved so quickly. Except for the little dead girl. Except for Theresa Vanguard. She didn't move at all.  
  


* * *

  
Grissom found him sitting outside in the backyard on the trampoline. It occured to him that Greg probably wasn't supposed to be sitting on the trampoline of a victim's house. . .there could be evidence on it, after all. . .and then decided it was unlikely and it didn't matter. What mattered was Greg.  
Grissom took off his shoes and stepped up on the trampoline. He didn't bother to try to make his steps quiet. . .it was sort of impossible to sneak up to someone on a trampoline when you could feel if a fly landed on it. He walked unsteadily to where Greg was sitting in the center, facing away from the house, and sat down. Greg smiled somewhat bitterly but didn't say anything.  
After a moment of silence and reflecting on the position in which they were now both in, Grissom asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"  
"Do I have a choice?"  
"You always have a choice."  
Greg laughed. It was not the normal type of laughter. "I suppose someone really great and important a few hundred years ago said that, right?"  
Grissom shrugged. "Probably."  
Greg stayed quiet for a long time. Grissom watched him look out at the horizon for awhile and then look back down again, as if it hurt to look out at the world so long. Finally, in a soft voice that was seldom heard by any of his co-workers, Greg said, "Detective O'Riley mentioned the girl's father and a custody battle. Seemed to think that he had killed the mother and run away with the girl. I just took it for granted that he was right."  
"It was the natural thing to do. Catherine wasn't expecting the girl to be dead either, otherwise, she never would have sent you in that bedroom alone."  
"Yeah, I guess," Greg said. He looked back out at the sky again. "I guess this seems pretty stupid to you, huh? I bet you've seen a hundred dead kids in all the cases you've worked."  
"I've seen a lot," Grissom replied, his voice matter-of-fact but equally as soft. "But they don't really get much easier as time goes on. You learn to deal with working their cases, in a way, but you never accept it. It's our natural human response to be angry and upset with any case so monstrous as to deal with the death of children."  
Greg snorted and looked at Grissom for the first time. "You seem to think everything is natural."  
Grissom thought about it. "I guess I do, in a way," he said. "I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in facts, evidence, science. I believe in nature. Everything we do is natural. I used a toaster oven this morning to make myself a bagel because it's natural that human evolution strives to make technological leaps to ease our lives and make everything more convenient. Our technology is natural, our patterns our natural, our emotional responses are natural. Your reaction to finding a little girl dead in her closet is perfectly natural."  
Greg's voice sounded bitter. "Is that supposed to help?"  
"No. There isn't a lot that helps with this sort of thing. You just have to move on the best way you know how. The best way you can."  
Greg didn't say anything. He just let his head fall down forward and covered his face lightly with his hands, massaging his forehead slightly with his fingertips. "Great," Greg said, his voice not much higher than a whisper, and let his hands slide down the sides of his face, clasping them together under his chin, as if praying. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "I found her like this, you know. Her hands clasped together. Praying. Praying for someone to save her. I found her just like this. Only her eyes were open. Staring."  
Grissom didn't know what to say to that. He decided to stick to the facts. "The murderer posed both Theresa and her mother." He felt his lips turn into a bitter twist of a smile matching Greg's a moment ago. "He wanted his message to be clear."  
"It's not clear to me. I don't understand."  
Grissom knew it wasn't the killer's message Greg was referring to but he said it anyway. "Fear. The murderer was mocking their fear of him."  
"She must have been so afraid. Only four years old. . ."  
"Yeah."  
Greg's eyes opened. He looked at Grissom and Grissom felt his heart sink a bit looking into those brown eyes. They were flowing with unshed tears. "I don't understand why," he said.  
Grissom just looked at him sadly. "I know," he said softly. "No one understands."  
Greg stared at Grissom's face for a few minutes, as if there were hidden answers there, answers that would help, until finally his tears spilled down his cheeks and he put his head down on his knees, arms wrapping tightly around them, quietly crying. Grissom opened his mouth to say something and then didn't know what to say. What do you say to something like that? He hesitated and ended up closing his mouth, choosing not to say anything, and laid a supportive hand down on the younger man's shaking shoulders. There there, Grissom thought to himself sadly, knowing that those words never did any good, that no words ever did. There there.  
  


* * *

  
"How's he doing?"  
"All right, I suppose, given the circumstances. I gave him the rest of the shift off and drove him home. Hopefully he can get some sleep."  
"Hopefully, his sleep won't be full of nightmares," Catherine said and Grissom nodded as he sat down on the couch next to her in the lounge. She felt so horrible. She had been rude to Greg all morning and then she had sent him into that room to find that little girl, to witness that heartbreaking sight all on his own. It wasn't enough that she had nearly killed him before with the explosion in the lab? Now she had to send poor Greg off to find a dead girl in—  
"It's not your fault," Grissom said. "No one expected that little girl to be there. It was. . .natural. . .for you to think the room would be empty."  
"Oh, don't try to be nice, Gil," she snapped. "I screwed up. Again. God, Greg must hate me."  
"He doesn't hate you at all," Grissom said flatly. "To be honest, he wasn't even thinking about you. He was just thinking about that little girl and how in God's name it could have happened to a little four year old. The same question we all ask when we see a child's body. You were probably on his mind about as much as a mac and cheese dinner."  
Catherine laughed and wiped away tears in her eyes. "I just feel so guilty."  
"It is the nature of man to feel guilty for the things he had no part in and to fail to take responsibility for the crimes in which he has committed."  
"Thoreou?"  
Grissom shrugged. "Just me."  
Catherine smiled. "I like it just being you." She looked at him and then stood up, sighing. "I wish there was something we could do."  
"We are. Greg found those fingerprints near the window. You found hair in the pool of blood that didn't match the vic, a shoe print in the bathroom far too large to be a woman's. There's a houseful of evidentiary clues. We'll find out who did this and bring him to justice."  
"But we can't stop it from happening again. Sure, if we catch the guy, we'll put him in jail and he won't be able to go near another woman and her daughter again. But what about the five million other crazy people in this world? What about all of their victims? We can't save everyone, Gil. We can't even save most of them."  
"We can save some of them," Grissom said simply. "That might not be everything but at least it's something. We can only do the best that we can do. To ask for more is to ask for God."  
Catherine smiled sadly. "Is it so much to ask for?"  
Grissom shook his head. "I don't know, Catherine. I don't know all the answers. I wish I did. I wish I could have told Greg what he needed to hear. I wish I could have told him why this act of evil happened and why he had to see it. But I can't because I don't know all the answers. I'm not even a Catholic anymore. I'm certainly not God."  
"I didn't know you ever were a Catholic."  
"A long time ago. A very long time ago."  
Catherine took a breath. "Well," she said, "I told you I liked it just being you. God would be nice but I'll settle for a beer with a friend. You up for it?"  
Grissom smiled. "Lead the way." 


End file.
